1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for firmware authentication.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As information technology (IT) develops, people rely more on information technology to handle daily work. Therefore, the security of IT products is becoming more and more a serious issue. One critical factor for an IT product is that its firmware is commonly used in an attached storage. The firmware is essentially a set of machine code, typically stored in some form of a non-volatile memory. The firmware for an IT product allows a Central Processing Unit (CPU) to perform functions such as initialization, diagnostics, loading the operating system kernel from mass storage, and input/output (I/O). U.S. Pat. No. 5,937,063 discloses a secure subsystem to prevent unauthorized replacement of a storage device containing a boot-up firmware by establishing a secure path between a secure boot device and a host processor based on an electronic keying mechanism. The secure boot device is coupled to the storage device and encrypts the firmware based on a secret key to generate an encrypted code. The host processor then decrypts the encrypted code based on the same secret key to generate a decrypted code. The host processor executes the decrypted code only if the decrypted code corresponds to the firmware. A communication path is established between the secure boot device and the host processor to allow the two processors to communicate securely by exchanging such encrypted messages. However, the secret key is an encoding and/or decoding parameter used by conventional cryptographic algorithms such as Rivest, Shamir and Adleman (“RSA”), Data Encryption Algorithm (“DEA”) as specified in Data Encryption Standard (“DES”) and the like. If the secret key is acquired by an intruder, the intruder can remove the storage device containing the boot-up firmware and substitutes another, unauthorized boot-up device for the authorized storage device.
Hence, an improved system and method that overcomes the above-mentioned deficiencies of current firmware authentication is desired.